


Undying

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Slavic Mythology & Folklore
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Dark Magic, Duelling, F/M, Fairytale Motifs, Folklore, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Quests, Russian Mythology, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-15 00:18:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1284175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cersei Lannister and the High Sparrow make surprising choices of champion for Cersei’s trial by combat. Jaime Lannister sends Brienne of Tarth on another quest, but is he trying to punish Brienne or himself? </p><p>Canon continuation with a slight divergence. Inspired in part by the Russian fairytale/folktale of Koschei the Deathless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Champion

**Author's Note:**

> After writing [Sweet and Bone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1024720/chapters/2039725), my blend of J/B and Hansel and Gretel, which was almost wholly canon-compliant and mostly Brienne’s POV, I really wanted to write something similar that would be more Jaime’s POV. And here it is! (The two fics are not connected in any way, you needn’t have read Sweet and Bone or know anything about the Koschei fairytale to read this.) Spoilers through ADWD, I own nothing.

The summons greeted Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth’s return to the Lannister host from their encounter with the Brotherhood Without Banners and its ghastly leader. The raven sent to Harrenhal might have bided its time in winging those dark words their way, and the rider Ser Bonifer Hasty had sent to find the Lannister host and deliver the message might have known Jaime and Brienne would be tired from their journey. More than tired: sore-muscled and dark-countenanced from the battle waged in a nameless cave, worn out with the cold anger and leaden guilt which stood between them like a silent sentry, watching their every move, preventing them from speaking more to each other than the few necessary words about food, firewood, and watering the horses. 

Jaime read the scroll Peck handed him, felt the blood draining from his face, leaving him the color of whey. He passed the message to Brienne without looking at her. She read, and reread, and reread it again, as though the burning force of her gaze could transform the words into something less final. 

“This cannot be,” she said at last, her voice creaking like a rusty chain from lack of use and the damage the noose had done to her throat. 

Jaime had sung occasionally during their long ride back from Lady Stoneheart’s hideaway, mostly to relieve the urgent desire to shake the wench till her teeth rattled in her head. Brienne had spent hours on end saying nothing, grieving for her squire and some hedge knight who’d been captured alongside her, mute as a stone, and as yielding and companionable. Not that Jaime had wanted her company. When he’d woken up and seen her huddled, sleeping form across the remains of their fire that morning, it was all he could do not to wake the wench with a sharp kick to her treacherous ribs.

“It cannot be,” she repeated, quiet and pig-headed. 

_Some things, at least, never change_ , Jaime thought with bitterness and something he refused to recognize as relief. 

“The champion of the Faith has to be one of the Warrior’s Sons,” Brienne insisted, staring between Jaime, who wouldn’t return her look, and Peck, who just looked bewildered at having his opinion solicited. “Doesn’t he? And the queen’s champion has to be a member of the Kingsguard. One member of the Kingsguard cannot be made to fight another. The High Septon cannot change the rules.” 

“This new High Septon is a bird of a different feather from the fat hogs who preceded him. And it was my sweet sister who changed the rules when she allowed him to revive the Faith Militant,” Jaime replied to the frozen mud beneath his feet, to his boots, to the tops of the bare trees swaying in a wind coming out of the north like the breath of an army long dead. Not to Brienne’s face. “Kingslaying was not enough to have me dismissed from the Kingsguard, but it seems the High Sparrow’s lashes and thumb screws have produced enough evidence of my other sins to ensure Cersei and I will end this life as we started it: together.” 

So much for his burning Cersei’s letter, refusing to act as her white knight ever again. So much for everything Jaime had done since coming back to King’s Landing, a hand short, a sense of honor rekindled in his breast, and a glum giantess at his side. Jaime did not doubt that even if Cersei’s champion won – which he undoubtedly would, Jaime’s left hand being about as useful as a wet fish in comparison to what his right hand had been – the Faith would use the evidence against her and the persuasive power of the mob’s newfound religious zeal to part Cersei from her pretty head. Apparently there was such a thing as destiny after all, and it would no more let Jaime out of its clutches than a bored cat would consent to release a captive mouse. 

“Jaime.”

He saw Peck start at the wench’s easy use of his name. It was the first time she had called him anything or addressed him directly since he had dragged the truth about Stoneheart out of her, word by stumbling word, before the sun had passed the midday zenith on the day they had set out from Pennytree. Jaime had wanted to drag the wench off her horse and beat her down into the roadside dust then and there, yet still he had gone with her to confront the dead woman and her ravening pack of self-righteous curs. Thoros of Myr had been the best of them, the rest little more than a ragged, half-trained assembly of failed sellswords and smallfolk puffed up beyond their true size by the stolen swords and scavenged pikes they had wielded. That had not stopped Jaime killing quite a few of them after he had plunged his sword through the wineskin the fat red priest had had in place of a gut, and Brienne had parted Lady Stark from what little life had still squatted in the woman’s cold, white flesh. 

Would that Jaime could do the same to the High Sparrow and all the rest of that zeal-stoked mob baying for his and Cersei’s blood. He could almost hear their howls on the wind, the North’s revenge laughing at him through Winter’s sharp teeth. 

He turned his back on his squire and the Maid of Tarth, and started to trudge toward his tent, his stride shortened to that of a hobbled horse by the ridges of frozen mud and slick snow fallen in the night. 

The wench spoke again behind him, her voice rising, if only just. Enough for him to know she was upset. “Jaime.”

“Leave be, wench,” he said without looking back. 

The missive from King’s Landing specified incest and dereliction of duty to his king as the grounds on which Jaime had been stripped of the white cloak in his absence. The letter dangled one last chance to save his neck, a carrot before a mule. Jaime’s sole consolation was that whoever championed Cersei would be a better fighter than Stoneheart’s mangy dogs, and would undoubtedly kill Jaime before the High Septon and his flock of sparrows could peck out his guts. So in the end Jaime’s love for his sister and his faith in Brienne’s honesty would join hands to be the death of him. The thought was almost worth a snort. Almost. 

Jaime slipped on the icy ground, nearly lost his footing. Trudged on, and lifted his tent flap at last, greeted by a gust of close air which smelled of braziers and clean bedding. Still he would not look at Brienne, frozen far behind him, when he spoke. 

“My sweet sister has chosen trial by combat to test her innocence, and the High Sparrow wants me for the Faith’s champion, so I can prove my guilt by dying at the hands of one of my erstwhile brothers. Of course, I could hardly have fucked Cersei without her being present, so what the High Sparrow really wants from me is to act the mummer for hungry smallfolk. In the end I will be dead, and my sister will still be guilty. If I believed in them, I would say the gods must be pissing themselves with laughter up there in the sparkly quintessence.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lifted the reference to the ‘sparkly quintessence’ from the (sadly cancelled) show “Kings.” It seemed like something Jaime would say.


	2. Challenge

Jaime sought her out late on the night of their return to the Lannister host, so late the hour of the owl had almost given way to that of the wolf. Brienne lay wide awake in the small tent young Josmyn Peckledon had had set up for her to the rear of Jaime’s own sprawling tent, more a movable palace of red and yellow cloth than a soldier’s pavilion. Close enough to protect Brienne’s honor from the men, far enough that she had a bit of privacy, and was not underfoot while the wintry sun went down in a massacred sky, darkness gathered like an ambush, and Jaime prowled the camp, greeting the men, asking for news, feigning good cheer. 

Brienne was certain the sleeping arrangements were no accident: Jaime’s squire had witnessed their reactions to the missive from the capital, and seemed a sensible and sensitive lad. The sort of lad to whom it would occur to keep his lord’s highborn guest safe, but also out of sight. Brienne could only hope a knight’s life would not coarsen Josmyn’s kind soul. He reminded Brienne of Pod, a bit.

Her hand flew to Oathkeeper’s hilt, nestled beside her on the bedroll, within easy gripping and drawing distance, when she heard footsteps crunch through frozen snow and stop outside her tent. Jaime’s voice made her hand tighten on the hilt, for comfort and reassurance, for naked terror. 

“Come out of there, wench. I would speak with you.”

Jaime sounded tired and sharp and frayed. He did not care that he might have woken her, or he knew her better than to think she could have slept with the words of the High Septon’s missive still carved and bleeding behind her eyes. 

Brienne pulled on her boots and cloak, wondering if Jaime would confront her at last about her lies, her treachery, her luring him into a trap. Or attempting to lure him. He had needed no more than a few blade-thin, precise words to get the truth out of her. 

Lady Stoneheart’s face rose before Brienne, unbidden, unstoppable. The dead woman’s expression had not altered when Oathkeeper severed her tenuous grip on whatever semblance of life the Red God had gifted her. That was the worst of it: had Stoneheart, the Hangwoman whose fury had cost Hyle Hunt his life, Mother Merciless who’d killed innocent little Podrick with no more care than Brienne might take to sweep a dry leaf from her cloak, had she wept or cursed or even screamed, Brienne could have believed there had still been something of Lady Stark left in that cold breast. As it was, Brienne had nearly led Jaime to his doom on no more than a dead, unnatural thing’s word, a false promise anyone other than Brienne would have recognized at once for mere shadowplay. 

Brienne gritted her teeth against Pod and Hyle’s remembered faces, alive and smiling and alive, and buckled on her sword. Jaime’s sword. If he asked for it back, she would surrender it without argument. If he attempted to fight her, she would surrender the sword and let him do as he liked with her. She deserved it, and worse, whatever the punishment he was finally prepared to mete out to her. 

Jaime waited for her in the darkness between his tent and hers, a pillar of gold and ice in a crimson cloak. Brienne realized with a start that there was no sword on his right hip. The last time she had seen Jaime unarmed had been while traveling with Lord Bolton’s man Steelshanks. It boded ill. 

“I have a task for you, wench.” Jaime spoke very quietly. Though it was so dark Brienne could only discern the red of his cloak and the glimmer of his eyes and teeth, he kept his face turned away from her, still would not look at her. His averted gaze pierced her, a flaming sword through the heart. “A test of your honor, as it were.” 

The words were harsh and well-deserved. Brienne waited, glad of the darkness which shielded her from Jaime’s sight. 

He spoke to the back of his tent, to the chips of unmelting ice which were the stars above it. “The rider who brought that message also passed on some gossip Harrenhal’s new maester imparted. Apparently my sister’s champion is a new addition to the Kingsguard, though I’ve never heard of him. Robert Strong, as false a name as ever I heard. He came forth not long after Gregor Clegane was rumored to have snatched his last breath. They say this Robert Strong is nine feet tall, he never sleeps or eats, or fucks or shits or shows his face, but only goes about in armor and greathelm, and prays, and kills. What does that say to you, wench?”

Brienne was at a loss. She had expected recrimination, anger, a challenge to cross swords. Not this: the low thrum of contained rage in Jaime’s voice directed at someone other than her, and a tale of a champion risen like a specter from a wishing well in the queen regent’s hour of need. 

“Oh,” Brienne said, small, wondering. “He sounds… not human.”

Jaime’s laugh was a brief bark, a teeth-baring defiance. “I should say the ravens the maesters use for their gossip instead of relaying solid facts are the reason this war is still dragging on, except now I find I am grateful to that lot of dried-up eunuchs and their fishwife ways. But for them, I would have strolled into King’s Landing expecting to be killed ignominiously by drunk old Boros Blount or that cold dagger of a man Meryn Trant, and found myself faced in their stead by whatever abomination my sister’s sellspell sorcerers have managed to contrive.” 

Jaime looked at Brienne at last. She nearly took a step back as the starlight fell on his sharp cheekbones, his glittering eyes, the hard set of his mouth. Jaime looked like a bearded, green-eyed demon come to drag her to the deepest hell. This was why he wore no sword: in his current mood, he would have cut down her and anyone else who crossed his path before he could bring himself to say whatever it was he needed to get out. Brienne’s left heel dug into the frozen ground, her right hip jutted forward, as though in anticipation of a blow. Her calf muscles were tense and wanting to retreat, but she forced herself to remain calm and loose-limbed in the face of Jaime’s anger. He had yet to speak her name.

“What will you do?” she asked, had to stop herself from kneeling in the snow and mud, and offering to take his place, to face the queen regent’s monstrous champion herself, impossible as that would be. She was neither man, nor Kingsguard. Brienne nearly made the offer regardless, nearly knelt and bared her neck to Jaime’s judgment, but his voice stopped her. 

“ _I_ ,” Jaime replied slowly, emphasizing every word like a calligrapher’s pen stroke, “will do as I am bid for once in my life, and travel to King’s Landing to fight Cersei’s champion. _You_ will go on a quest for me, and discover what magic Cersei is using, and how it can be beaten.”

Brienne gasped, her mouth opening and closing, her throat become a tunnel of ice in the cold night. Jaime watched her the way a hawk watches a vole in the grass. Brienne was certain he could discern every freckle, every shade of red and pink on her face, the very pupils of her eyes, despite the darkness. 

“You owe me a quest,” he said, silky words hiding sharp steel to confuse and confound her. “The one I gave you before did not precisely crown you in glory, now did it?” 

Brienne winced, which Jaime saw and talked on. 

“I may not be so without honor as to refuse the High Sparrow’s summons, or able to escape my sister’s deeds and my own, but I will be dragged to the seventh hell alive before I will let myself be killed by… _sorcery_.” The word was a vile imprecation on his tongue. “One dead creature brought back and trying to kill me is enough for any man.” 

He ignored Brienne’s guilty start. 

“You will go to Lannisport for me, wench. A woman lives there who knows about magic and prophecies and the like. If anyone can untangle this, she can. You will pay her price, whatever it is, and you will come to me in King’s Landing with what you discover. _Then_ we will consider the debt you owe me for your clumsy lies settled, and only then.” Jaime’s smile twisted Brienne’s insides like a giant’s fist, unseen, only felt. “A Lannister always collects his debts.” 

_He does not want me near him_ , Brienne thought, staring at her boots, two black smudges on the black and white ground. _And why should he? Liar, oathbreaker, unworthy…_

She took a deep breath, ice riming her throat and lungs, and looked up at Jaime’s savage mask of a face, all coarse beard, pale cheekbones like icy ridges, and eyes like green flames. 

“I accept the challenge, ser,” Brienne said, her voice unwavering, her hand on Oathkeeper’s hilt steady as the Wall. “I will not fail you. This I swear, though you may count my oath a paltry thing.” 

Jaime’s grin was two strands of pearls, something cool and precious which caught what little light there was and stole it out of the darkling world. Brienne moved to unbuckle the sword, to offer it back to him as proof of her pledge, but he was already turning, walking away from her, his face hidden by shadows. He had walked away from her just so in her dream, his cape swirling behind him, a trodden rose and her severed tongue lying at Brienne’s feet in a shaft of golden light. 

Jaime vanished around the side of his tent as though somebody had closed a box lid over him, and Brienne stood alone, feeling as barren and stark as the Winter night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let’s assume Brienne’s broken arm is mostly healed by now, and the bandages are gone from her cheek. Robert Strong is supposed to be eight feet tall, not nine, but he’s ‘grown’ some more in the rumors which reached Jaime’s camp.


	3. Combat

Jaime tarried at a flea-ridden inn outside the Dragon Gate until just before dawn on the day of the trial by combat. Rumors poured out of the capital like water from a leaky vessel even without Jaime attracting unnecessary attention by making his presence in the city known any sooner. He would not have been welcome at the Red Keep, and he felt no burning desire to have the smallfolk pelt him with jeers and rotten vegetables as they had done to his sister during her walk of penance. 

Jaime had heard all about that in the inn’s common room, peasants and peddlers laughing about it over tankards of thin ale. There was no denying the rage which had boiled up inside him at the thought of Cersei’s public shame, yet the rage had not burned quite as brightly as Jaime had expected it to. Certainly not as brightly as it would have done had this happened when he was whole. Then, Jaime would have slaughtered anyone in his path before they subjected Cersei to such an indignity. Now coarse talk of whores and peasants taunting Cersei with their flesh, street urchins and respectable wives flinging filth and insults at her made him angry in the same way his phantom fingers sometimes seemed to twitch of their own accord. 

The anger was a residual thing, a matter of habit, as much a part of Jaime’s flesh and blood as what remained of his body, his self. Paired with it was something new, something small and cool and blindingly bright, like a tiny blade equally well suited to paring fruit and slicing skin from muscle. A mean satisfaction. A sense that Cersei had earned it, not through her deeds but through her arrogance, the unwavering belief in her own invulnerability. Jaime had learned that a lion could still limp on three paws, could still roar, if more quietly, when his tongue had been pulled out. Not so Cersei. She had always burned brightest of all the Lannisters, and would go on burning as she fell. 

As for the rest of Jaime’s family, mere flickers of the lions’ pride remained. His father was dead, and his brother as good as. His Uncle Kevan was freshly dead, killed by assassins unknown mere days before Jaime and his small retinue got within spitting distance of the city walls. 

Myrcella was still in Dorne, still safe despite what Cersei’s trial would mean for her legitimacy. Although the Red Viper had thrown his life away challenging the Mountain to trial by combat, the Martells were clever enough to conclude Myrcella was likely to remain one of the last Lannisters, even if she were stripped of the Lannister name. Her future husband could stand to gain a significant dowry in the gold and power of Casterly Rock, which made Myrcella valuable enough in the game everyone but Jaime so loved to play, though smallfolk might cry the girl was the fruit of incest, an abomination in the eyes of the gods. 

As soon as the near-certain proof of his illegitimacy had become common knowledge, Tommen’s wife and goodfather had spirited the boy away from King’s Landing. By the day of Cersei’s trial, they were sitting snug behind the walls of Highgarden with all their host and their grain, leaving the capital to drown itself in religious zeal and bodily hunger. Jaime doubted the Tyrells had rescued his son from the Faith out of any true love for the boy, but Jaime would not begrudge whatever long game they thought they were playing if it meant Tommen would die an old man, an honored hostage, surrounded by apple trees and wheat fields and cats. 

So there was no king on the Iron Throne, hence no need for a Kingsguard or its Lord Commander. Nobody ruled the city, though the High Sparrow kept passions in hand, guiding the mob like a raging river, down channels which served his own purpose. The man seemed to have no interest in thrones, but he was playing with lives regardless, wagering on the smallfolk against vengeful kings and indifferent gods. 

The whole of King’s Landing was poised with bated breath, a blind man standing confident on the edge of a precipice. The city had never forgotten how the Lannister host had sacked the capital while Jaime butchered the last Targaryen king, the one person who had been meant to protect them all. So far as the mob was concerned, watching Tywin Lannister’s children be hacked to pieces would be sweeter than honey and more filling than porridge. Justice laced with retribution: the beggar’s feast. 

The day of Cersei’s trial, which was also Jaime’s trial although he supposedly championed the Faith, arrived at last, a clear red dawn like fires roaring just over the horizon. Jaime had received no news of Brienne’s quest. He had not really expected Brienne to be able to compel Maggy the Frog to aid him, yet still the lack of any sign of the wench’s success or lack thereof made him ache, a dull, throbbing point under Jaime’s ribs. He did not even know whether Brienne was still alive, and after what had been done to her between her leaving King’s Landing and finding Jaime at Pennytree the possibility of her death loomed much larger and starker in Jaime’s mind. 

He refused to think any more of the wench as he donned a heavy, hooded cloak and mounted a nondescript horse, leaving Honor and Glory at the inn in the care of the ever faithful Peck, who had insisted on accompanying his lord to his lord’s likely death. A lad’s idea of honor: Jaime remembered it well. 

The streets of King’s Landing grew steadily more crowded the nearer Jaime drew to the open space before the Great Sept of Baelor, where the trial would take place under the benevolent gaze of the statue of shrivel-balled Baelor himself. Mixed in with the usual crowd of city smallfolk, come to see noble blood spilled as they would flock to a fairground, were sparrows beyond count, making themselves known to Jaime’s nose even before he lifted his gaze from his horse’s mane and spotted them from under his heavy hood. They stank worse than the city’s open sewers, worse than the remembered smell of Jaime’s severed hand slowly rotting around his neck. If bodily filth was so close to godliness, Jaime was certain the seven heavens would reek worse than the worst hell, and was briefly, wryly relieved he would never have to experience for himself the joy of an eternity among the blessed. 

The Faith did well enough to keep the mob at bay, better than the gold cloaks or the palace guards would have done, Jaime had to admit that much. A circle of Warrior’s Sons kept a large space in the middle of the square empty of people. The seven-pointed crystal stars on their helmets, sword pommels and shields caught and reflected the Winter sunlight, sharp daggers through Jaime’s eyes. Jaime wondered if the High Sparrow realized that would be a tactical disadvantage to his champion and Cersei’s chosen knight alike. No doubt the Faith relied on the Crone’s lantern to guide Jaime’s hand, the Warrior to stand by his side and strike true for him. 

Jaime threw off his cloak and dismounted. A roar as of the waves breaking beneath Casterly Rock went up from the crowd, which tried to draw closer, pressing in vain against the Warrior’s Sons’ cliff-like backs. “Kingslayer,” they chanted, that name become a prayer. “Kingslayer. Champion. Light of the Seven.” 

Jaime wished he were in the mood to savor the irony. Instead he checked that his sword would slide free of its scabbard easily, strapped his shield to his right arm. And waited. And waited. 

Much sooner than the crawling time seemed to warrant, the double doors of the Great Sept opened, and the High Sparrow came out surrounded by some of his Slightly Less Exalted Sparrows. They all looked alike, kin to the unwashed mob which screamed in ecstasy to see them. The only thing which distinguished the High Sparrow from his dirty, homespun-clad flock was the light of absolute conviction in his deep-set eyes. They reminded Jaime of the Mad King’s eyes. He wondered if the High Sparrow was aware of the resemblance. The man’s unkempt beard was a match for Jaime’s, though longer and greyer. 

None of these idle thoughts lent calm or steadiness to Jaime’s left hand where it rested on the pommel of his sword. He endeavored to clear his mind of all thought, like burning chaff in an empty field, while the High Sparrow led the crowd in a twittering prayer, and spoke at length about sin and its bitter harvest. Looking around the circle of Warrior’s Sons to pass the time, Jaime realized with a start that one of the honor guard attending his likely demise was none other than his Cousin Lancel, hair still white, cheeks still gaunt, yet red with conviction and the cold air. Lancel gave no sign of recognizing Jaime, his eyes fixed straight ahead, toward the empty center of the circle where champions would clash.

At long last the two Warrior’s Sons directly opposite Jaime parted to let the queen regent’s champion through. 

He wore no white cloak. His armor was crimson and gold, Lannister colors brilliant as freshly spilled blood in the sun. They made the man look desperately defiant rather than staunchly proud against the backdrop of dun-colored crowd and bright blue sky. Jaime thought briefly of Brienne, but the wench’s scarred, plain face would not linger before his eyes as he stared at the approaching figure in its garish armor. 

He was not nine feet tall, not even close. He did not hide his face behind a greathelm. His helmet was light and open, gold-plated and lion-crested, carried under the champion’s arm. The sun glinted on the stubble of golden hair sprouting from that beautiful head, beautiful still, despite the brutal shearing, and the ravages of shame and time and wine. Her eyes were as green and brilliant as ever. They burned almost as brightly as those of the High Sparrow. 

Cersei came toward him, in armor made to size, with a helmet under her arm and a sword hanging from her hip. Her footsteps were slow and heavy, the steps of one unaccustomed to armor’s weight, the dragging of a sword at her side, yet still she came, until she stood a mere ten feet from Jaime. Stood, and watched him, and smiled the sated, slightly inebriated smile she had often worn when Jaime would pull out of her, right before she’d hurry him back into his breeches and out of her chambers, almost more eager to have him gone than she had been for his cock inside her. 

There was nothing hurried about her now. She looked self-assured in a way Jaime had not seen since his flight from the capital, long before Joffrey’s death. 

“Greetings, Ser Jaime,” Cersei called out in a ringing voice. Had she been a man, Jaime would have called her cocksure. She would not even call him brother before gods and men any more. Fancied herself a real knight. 

“Sister,” Jaime returned more quietly, though not because he cared if the mob heard. “Has the wine finally addled your wits so much you would champion yourself?”

 _That_ brought a flush of anger to her cheeks. Jaime grinned to see it. Before she could respond, the High Sparrow clapped his hands like the father of quarreling children and commanded that the trial by combat begin. Haughtily not looking at her twin, Cersei donned her helmet, little more than a light halfhelm, while Jaime hefted his shield, drew his sword, and waited. 

Cersei came at him, as he had known she would, impatient to the last. She may never have come to him to have him fuck her, but at least Jaime could die in the knowledge that she had once begged him to come to her aid, and she had rushed him first during their duel to the death. And to the death it would be, for the Faith and its ravening followers were intent on drinking Lannister blood before the day was out. 

Jaime would make certain it was his blood. Whatever had passed between them, he could no more bring himself to kill Cersei than he could fetch the sun down from the sky. But he would have the truth from her before he let her kill him. Cersei and Brienne had both lied to him. Getting them to admit the truth was cold comfort, but it was all Jaime had left.

He lifted his sword to block Cersei’s first swing, nearly laughed to think the one opponent with whom he had crossed blades in practice or battle since his maiming, who could not make his left arm shudder under the impact, was his sister. She remained as untrained and soft as ever. 

“What is this foolishness, Cersei?” Jaime hissed at her across their locked swords, almost close enough to kiss or bite her ruby lips, thinned now to snarling red lines over her teeth with the effort of trying to push him back, to free herself and take another swing at him. “Where is your undying champion I’ve heard so much about? Did he decide your cunt wasn’t worth this mummery and abandon you as well?”

Cersei laughed, a tinkling sound, a drunken sound. Jaime could smell no wine on her breath. She was drunk on power, the certainty of her victory. She hardly needed to speak, for he already guessed the truth. 

“Why resort to a man’s sorry aid when I can be my own champion at last? Do you remember Qyburn, dear brother? He has made me invulnerable. Your sword shall neither touch me nor wound me for as long as my soul remains elsewhere, out of your reach. You thought to get away from me, but I shall show you all: the High Sparrow, Maggy, all of you.”

Jaime could have disentangled himself from her long moments past, but he needed to understand. Her soul? He guessed she did not speak in metaphor. Cersei had never had a poetic mind. Had she extracted her soul like an arrowhead and left it somewhere safe, to make her flesh invulnerable yet living in its absence? What did she mean by…

“Maggy?” Jaime grunted, making a great show of barely keeping his sister at bay. “What has she to do with anything?” A chill ran through him at the thought that he may have sent Brienne to a woodswitch who was in league with his sister, alongside that no-good chainless wonder Qyburn. 

“She thought to trick me with her false prophecies.” Cersei’s words were sweet venom on her lips. “Maggy told me I would be strangled by the valonqar, but Tyrion is not coming back, and you – you will neither touch me nor cut me, let alone wrap your hands about my throat, _little_ brother.”

With that she gathered all her strength and pushed against Jaime’s resistance, and he stumbled back, only half feinting, his mind a-whirl. Cersei thought he or Tyrion were destined to kill her, had thought it for years. Had believed it while she had let Jaime between her legs, while she had borne their children. 

The sunlight reflecting from the Warrior’s Sons’ pious crystals hurt Jaime’s eyes. The gold glint of the scrollwork on Cersei’s sword was brighter by far. The spell may have made her impossible to wound or kill, but it lent her neither strength nor skill. Cersei swung her finely balanced weapon like an axe, grimacing with the effort as she came at her twin, so Jaime had plenty of time to dance out of the way and bat her sword aside with the tip of his blade, nearly sending her sprawling while the crowd shouted, and hooted, and cheered. Cersei grunted like a pig as she heaved herself up and came at him again, face twisted with fury, realizing that Jaime had been going easy on her, drawing her out. 

Jaime did not wish to kill her, but he was no more going to surrender his life to his sister’s madness and sorcery than he had intended to do while he’d still thought his opponent would be an armored giant conjured back from the cold grave. 

_Brienne_ , Jaime thought desperately as he retreated before Cersei’s madly swinging sword, lifted his useless right arm to receive a blow on his shield, a hollow grating of metal on metal. _Brienne. Wench. Don’t you bloody dare let me down now._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jaime doesn’t have a helmet and Cersei doesn’t have a shield, because Jaime is that badass (roll with it) and Cersei has enough to do even hefting a sword while in full armor. The Warrior’s Sons are somewhat more ornately dressed and equipped here than in canon, all in the service of making Jaime’s task more difficult.


	4. Choice

The woman whom smallfolk and highborn alike called Maggy the Frog proved easy to find. Lannisport was not a very large city, and everyone seemed to know the Eastern witch’s cottage on the outskirts, far enough from the harbor and the marketplace that the Sunset Sea was not within sight, and even the hill upon which Casterly Rock squatted was so far away the castle resembled a great stone toad, honey-golden in the Winter sunlight. 

Brienne had not known what to expect. Even so, she was taken aback at the stale fug of spices and unwashed flesh which assailed her on stepping into Maggy’s kitchen, the sight of the woman herself, green-skinned and jowly yet with eyes as lively and inquisitive as those of a songbird, only far shrewder. Maggy looked timeless. She might have come into the world fully formed, just as Brienne saw her, unchanged since the age of the First Men, gathering wisdom and power around her like the patchwork of rags in which she was dressed, seemingly useless against the Winter yet thick and layered like an old book. 

At the inn where she had spent the night, Brienne had heard tell that Maggy had once been married to a minor noble of the Westerlands, and spawned an entire lesser House with him. If that were true, Brienne could not imagine what compelled the woman to live as she did in her old age, little more than a woodswitch who sold love potions and told fortunes at fairs. Still and all, Brienne came to her as a supplicant. It would not do to show less respect than Maggy’s age alone merited. Brienne was less certain about the woman’s wisdom, but Jaime believed her to be a genuine witch, and Brienne was not so foolish as to judge anyone for the face they presented to the world through no choice of their own. 

She offered Maggy a stiff bow, not as deep as Brienne would have liked due to her armor, but more appropriate to Brienne’s masculine garb and the sword at her hip than a curtsy would have been. 

“My lady,” Brienne began, straightening. “I am called…”

“Leave off, daughter. I’m no lady, and well you know it. And I know who you are,” Maggy the Frog interrupted, yellow teeth in purple gums revealed in a broad grin. Her face was like a living mummer’s mask, a piece of magic, always shifting. She waved her visitor onto a backless stool by the crackling fire, across from where Maggy herself sat, her bare, wrinkled feet extended toward the fire. “Brienne of Tarth, the lady in breeches on a knight’s quest, the Kingslayer’s scarred whore.” 

Brienne’s cheek throbbed as she flinched. She colored, and not because the fire made the air in Maggy’s kitchen quite close. “I am not… Ser Jaime and I do not…” She could not think of a polite and convincing way to say the truth. 

Maggy shrugged, heavy breasts swinging under her patchwork robe. “And I am not truly a frog, yet that is how the world sees me, and so that is the name I bear. Tell me what you seek, child of Tarth.”

A part of Brienne, the mulish part which had kept Jaime alive in the Riverlands and kept her oath to Lady Stark to the bitter end, wanted to ask challengingly whether Maggy didn’t already know the object of her quest. But good manners won out, so Brienne took a deep breath and spoke as politely and blandly as she had used to recite her lessons for Septa Roelle. 

“Ser Jaime Lannister has been named champion of the Faith. His sister will be championed by a man who may be something less than a man. Or something more. I need to know the truth of it so that I may help Jaime win the duel.” 

_Win his life._ Brienne could not bring herself to say that, though Maggy understood well enough judging from the look on her face, equal parts compassion and shrewdness. She shook her head at Brienne. 

“Not a man, daughter. His sister _is_ her own champion. The silly child thinks to save herself by hiding away whatever’s left of her soul, and thus making her flesh invulnerable.” The witch giggled like a snapping, popping, dry-wood fire. “To think one little prophecy shaped her whole life, though she considers herself sole mistress of her destiny.” 

Seeing Brienne’s confused expression, Maggy leaned in as though to share a particularly plump and juicy bit of gossip. 

“I told her, you see,” Maggy said, chortling like a milk churn, “when she was but a slip of girl. Told her the valonqar would one day wrap his hands about her throat and choke the life from her. Little brother. So now the silly child thinks to keep her death at bay by baiting the man she once accepted into her bed, and killing him like an old dancing bear past his prime.”

The image made Brienne wince with painful yet precious memories. She tried to clear the fug of remembrance, to stay intent on her task, the challenge Jaime had set for her. “But how? And how do I stop her?”

Maggy laughed and slapped her knee as at a particularly clever joke. Brienne was just starting to take offense and rise from her stool when Maggy waved her back into her seat, the old woman’s dark eyes limpidly beautiful, wise, and mirthful in her ageless, ravaged face. 

“You will not let your golden lion perish, but what can you do, daughter? Magic is a knotty thing to unravel, as are prophecies.”

Brienne mulled this over. “I will not let him die,” she said slowly, “but if I can unravel this… Mayhap he cannot live without her, and I shall not force him to.” Brienne looked Maggy in the eye, set her jaw stubbornly. “I will take the burden, if I have to. I will stand in for him and… do what must be done. If I can retrieve her soul, I will be the one to destroy it.” 

_Let Jaime hate me for it_ , she thought. _He hates me already._

“And what of you, Brienne of Tarth? What of your soul? What of your heart?”

Brienne shook her head. “Not important,” she muttered to the flagstones by the witch’s hearth before she looked again into Maggy’s dark, jewel-like eyes. “Now please tell me how.”

“I admire your courage, daughter, and your faith in that most fragile of men, and that shy little love cowering in your heart, too frightened to bloom forth. But you cannot take the place of a man locked in a sacred dance. Magic and ritual should not be taken lightly, and everything has a price.”

“Name it.” The words hastened from Brienne’s lips, quick and sure as the downward stroke of a sword. 

Maggy grinned, more hungrily than perhaps she intended. She was transformed for an uncomfortable moment from a frog to a wily old she-wolf. 

“A few drops of blood is what I ask, though there may be more required of you before this tale is done.” 

Ignorant of why she obeyed so blindly yet certain it was the correct response, Brienne held out her right hand, index finger extended. Maggy chuckled in delight and produced from somewhere on her person a long needle. Quick as a dueling knight, she pierced the callused pad of Brienne’s finger and wrapped her soft lips around it, sucking loudly, making Brienne gasp. 

Maggy sat back, smacking her lips with relish. Brienne fought the urge to hide her hand, wipe away the feel of the witch’s lips on her breeches. 

“It is an old magic,” Maggy said, eyes closed as she savored the rich taste of Brienne’s blood, “not often used. Silly, if you ask me. The false queen’s black little soul is in a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in a gold chest bound by nine gold chains and buried deep in the ground.” She opened her eyes and smiled at Brienne. “The needle must be broken to release the soul, which will make Cersei Lannister mortal again. And what is mortal can surely die.”

“Deep in the ground… I don’t…”

“You cannot dig that deep, daughter, nor have you the time. The trial by combat is on the morrow.”

Brienne leapt up, overturning the stool in her haste. The wood clattered on the hearthstones, abominably loud. Maggy made a cutting gesture with her open palm, and Brienne froze on the spot, open-mouthed, waiting to hear what else the witch would say. 

“It will cost you more to get to the chest, and to get back to King’s Landing on time. Cost you your most precious possession.” 

Brienne’s hands obeyed the mercenary woman’s demand even before she could ask herself what she counted as her most precious possession. She unbuckled her belt, took it off, went down on one knee, and offered Oathkeeper to Maggy the Frog, hilt first, as she had once offered her sword and leal service unto death to Lady Catelyn. Brienne ground her teeth against the memory, and waited for the witch to accept or reject her choice. 

“From anyone else, this would be a poor offering indeed,” the old woman murmured, caressing the ornate gold hilt with her fingers, crooked and dark as tree-roots. “Anyone else would try to palm me off with a sword so they could keep their heart or wit or gold. But not you.” 

Maggy lifted her fingers from the sword and caressed Brienne’s mangled cheek just as lightly, gentle and possessive as a mother. Brienne started at the touch, then dared not move while Maggy stroked her ravaged flesh. Brienne closed her eyes to keep sudden tears behind her lashes. 

“What good will you be to anyone if you value a sword above yourself, daughter?” Maggy crooned as though singing a lullaby. 

Brienne sniffed, and dashed the tears from her eyes before they could fall, the sword unwavering in her other hand. She looked up at the other woman. “Do you accept?” she asked in her most level, knightly voice. 

Maggy watched her, expressionless, an idol carved from brown, pitted rock. Finally she took Oathkeeper gently out of Brienne’s hand, and stood. It was all Brienne could do not to grasp after the sword, against her will yet in obedience to what her thundering heart commanded. 

“Go outside and walk east until you come to a great forest,” Maggy said, her back to Brienne, her hands still caressing Oathkeeper. “Then walk though the forest until you reach a green oak tree. The chest will be waiting for you there. The rest is on you.”

“How shall I return to King’s Landing before the morrow?”

“You have paid the price. Now you must have faith and walk out of this house.” Maggy the Frog said nothing more, seemed deaf and uninterested in Brienne’s broken farewell. 

Brienne walked stiffly out of the cottage by the Sea and the Rock. She ignored the questioning whicker of her mare tethered in front of Maggy’s door, assuming the old witch would claim Brienne’s horse into the bargain, and walked east for half a day until she reached the forest. Then she walked for half a day more, sweating in her armor despite the cold, thirsty and hungry yet unwavering in her grim strides, until it was nearly full night and Brienne found herself before the biggest oak tree she had ever seen. Even in Winter, it was lush and thick with leaves like green hair. It seemed to draw the rest of the forest around it, a thick cloak of bare, skeletal branches. 

At its foot, next to a ragged hole torn into the turf between two gnarled roots as though some clawed beast had burrowed savagely after a fleeing rabbit, rested a chest of gleaming gold, bound by nine gold chains. 

Brienne no longer had Oathkeeper, but she was not without other weapons or skill. 

She drew her dagger and went to work on the gold locks which held the chains together, but as soon as the tip of her sharp steel touched the chains they fell open with a high, melodious tinkle.

Brienne lifted the gold lid cautiously. When the hare jumped out, she was ready for it, and caught it with her free hand, and wrung its soft, furry neck. 

The dead hare opened in her hands as though she had sliced it open yet without a single drop of blood spilling, and out came the duck. It rose into the air, flapping and quacking, but Brienne felled it with a pebble launched from her sling. 

The duck fell open when it struck the ground, and inside it lay the egg. It was mostly black, veined with gold, and unpleasantly warm in Brienne’s hand. She nearly squeezed her hand into a fist in revulsion and crushed the egg to get to the needle, but a chill of wild foreboding coursed down her limbs and stopped her. 

Brienne turned, the egg resting on her palm like a hideous, precious jewel on a slab of rough limestone, and saw her horse, which she had left at Maggy’s cottage, the beautiful bay mare Jaime had said was as homely as Brienne. The mare regarded her with warm, slightly wounded eyes, reins trailing on the forest floor by her hooves. The woman and the mare’s breaths fumed like two tiny, ineffectual fires in the clearing.

Brienne climbed into the saddle, puffing awkwardly as she felt for the stirrups with her feet and held the egg gingerly, out of harm’s way. Then she gathered the reins in her left hand and urged the mare forward through the dark forest, trusting against bitter experience that Maggy would hold up her end of the bargain. 

The mare galloped all night, through the hours of the owl, the wolf, and the nightingale. The sparks her hooves threw were the stars in the sky, the smudges of dark color which whipped past were clouds, or maybe the hills and rivers and war-ravaged fields of Westeros. The ride was smooth as milk, the mare’s pace tireless and evener than it would have been on any road of stone or packed dirt. The icy wind scourged Brienne’s hands and face, but she kept the egg close to her chest, cupped in her numb fingers and cushioned on her palm, as though it contained every life she had failed to protect as well as Jaime’s last hope. The egg pulsed gently in Brienne’s hand, still as warm as fresh blood despite the wind and the night. 

Dawn rose pale and cold, and Brienne beheld the walls of King’s Landing, tiny as a child’s toy, the Red Keep a bloody spear point, the Great Sept a flashing trinket far below her mare’s hooves. 

They galloped on while the hours rushed past from dawn till noon, and the city came closer and closer, grew bigger and bigger before them and under them, until at last Brienne dismounted in an alley on Visenya’s Hill. The black and gold egg cradled in her hand close to her chest, she started pushing through the crowd, thick as a nest of hornets, to reach the square before the Great Sept. The roar of a mob scenting blood ran downhill and washed over Brienne like the distant sound of breaking waves, a storm to scour the world clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brienne totally owns and knows how to use a sling. Totally.


	5. Courage

Despite the cold and the salty wind from Blackwater Bay, constant movement and the sun beating down on the square in front of the Great Sept had sweat dripping steadily into Jaime’s eyes as noon approached. The crowd was tireless, baying to see highborn blood stain the cobblestones as though the sight would fill their empty bellies. Their shouts and jeers became little more than wordless roars as the hours dragged on, reminding Jaime viscerally of the bear pit, furry, hungry, stinking death staring him and the wench in the face, while Vargo Hoat’s pack of mad, slavering dogs had barked and howled all around them. 

Not for the first time, Jaime lifted his right arm to wipe the sweat from his eyes, cursed through his teeth when he nearly hit himself in the eye with the edge of the shield strapped to his stump, also not for the first time. The watchers closest to him laughed, called out unhelpful advice. One huge, bearded man in a butcher’s apron suggested his wife might kiss the sweat from Jaime’s brow if Jaime gave up the fabled gold hand the butcher had heard so much about. The skinny, shrewish wife retorted the man could kiss Jaime himself if he was so eager for sinful profit. The Warrior’s Son standing guard closest to the couple remained impassive. Some time earlier, Jaime had found himself near his Cousin Lancel and asked sarcastically for a little help, receiving only a gentle, all-forgiving shake of Lancel’s white-haired head in response. Admirably, Jaime had not taken a moment to smash in Lancel’s teeth before he’d returned to the fray. 

In the time needed to take a deep breath, Jaime indulged in envy of the Warrior’s Sons’ equanimity. Then Cersei came at him again. 

Even left-handed as he was, Cersei should have been no match for him. She had no skill, and had had no training. Jaime suspected that without the magic she carried inside her and around her, she would have been barely able to stand up in her armor or heft her sword for more than a few moments. Yet they had fought for several hours already, and while they both tired and grew slow, neither could or would give in. Perfectly matched as ever, even now. 

Except they were not, nor was the spectacle they put on for the smallfolk a proper duel. Had Jaime’s opponent been a true swordsman, someone like Brienne but with no care for his wellbeing, Jaime would have been cut down long ago. Cersei used her sword sometimes as an axe, sometimes as a long needle, most often as a cudgel, as though she meant to batter or cut Jaime in half with it, and maybe she did. Her face was red with the effort, sweat poured down her face and neck. She grimaced, her face a hideous, thwarted mask, as Jaime danced away from her again and again, always making her attack so he could parry, and deflect, and make her come at him again. He knew he could not go on like that forever, he would tire sooner or later, his legs would give way under him, he would overreach and trip. Still Jaime refused to either attack or let his sister run him through for the sake of her madness and some foolish prophecy. 

The last time he had fought, genuinely fought for his life, Jaime had thought to rely on his skill and gain an easy victory, yet the wench’s strength and endurance had led him a long and merry dance. One of them might just have won that duel, had they not been rudely interrupted. But between the magic which made Jaime’s occasional offensive blows slide off Cersei’s armor like so much water, and the undeniable fact that his breaths were coming more and more labored and his muscles were burning, there was only one possible ending to this mummery. 

Jaime bridled at it. He had never felt so helpless, not even right after his maiming, for then at least the wench had been there to hold him up, to do for him what he could not do for himself. He had had a good idea of what needed doing this time, had entrusted the wench with the task, but the wench was not there. Jaime was alone. The cloudless sky mocked him with the color of Brienne’s eyes.

Cersei was rushing at him again, rash and heedless as a green squire, as she had been all her life, the sunlight glinting off her armor, transforming her into a shambling, clanking, tireless pillar of gold. Far from satisfying any rough-hewn semblance of justice, the performance would only feed the sparrows’ bloodlust. Jaime wished fleetingly for a nine-foot-tall, silent giant, who would have finished him off long ago, and ended this ridiculous, pointless agony. 

Jaime hefted his sword, prepared to meet his sister and push her back yet again. 

Cersei stumbled, though the cobbles on which they fought were perfectly smooth and clear of snow and ice. She stumbled, and stopped, the tip of her sword falling harmlessly to strike sparks from the honey-yellow stone, and laid her small, gauntleted hand on her armored breast. The look she threw Jaime was one of astonishment and disbelief, Cersei’s eyes very large and round and disturbingly like Brienne’s for a brief moment. 

“Oh,” Cersei said, the sound more glimpsed on her lips than heard over the crowd’s shouts. Some of the onlookers urged Jaime to finish her, but most screamed for more dueling, more dancing, for both their blood. 

Over the rising tide of smallfolk screaming, Jaime heard a voice he recognized call his name, recognized it even in all that noise, even with sweat dripping into his eyes, and his breath wheezing in his throat, and the sight of his sister before him, looking small and at a loss in her heavy armor. 

Jaime tore his eyes away from Cersei and beheld the wench among the unwashed. She towered over the Warrior’s Son in front of her and was being pushed from behind, yet stood as resolute and unmovable as Casterly Rock. 

There was something in Brienne’s hand, she was gesturing to Jaime to catch it. He heard Cersei let out a high-pitched scream as Brienne threw the something, which glinted gold and absorbed the sunlight as it arced gently through the air, a falling star, burning out as it fell. 

Jaime dropped his sword and caught the object, felt it give a little in his fist. 

In his hand was an egg of nighttime black and bright gold. Its shell had cracked slightly on impact, the runny white dripping over Jaime’s fingers, as sickeningly warm as though the egg had just been laid. 

Jaime looked up again to meet Brienne’s clear blue eyes, saw her smile shyly, crookedly, with the uninjured half of her face, and repeat the throwing gesture. Felt his mouth tug his tired, aching face into a tight grin as he grasped the wench’s meaning, watched Brienne try to push past the cliff face which was the Warrior’s Son’s back, her features drawn into a stubborn scowl. Jaime nearly dropped the egg and went to help her till he remembered Brienne could best any warrior in a fight, even a Warrior’s Son, and Jaime had another urgent matter in hand.

As a young girl and even more so after she’d flowered, Cersei had not been one for childish pranks, always so serious about life’s myriad absurdities. So it was with an odd sense of giddy, wild pleasure that Jaime pivoted on his heel till he was facing his sister again. 

Cersei was distracted, rubbing her breastplate over her heart and staring at the struggling Brienne with murder in her green eyes. 

Jaime whistled through his teeth. Tywin Lannister had caught Jaime whistling once when Jaime was ten years old, and taught his son a sharp lesson in manners: only stable boys and swineherds whistled. Jaime’s rear end hadn’t forgotten that lesson in a hurry. Now Jaime made sure his whistle was high and piercing, a thin, vulgar bugle of a sound. 

The crowd of onlookers fell silent as the whistle died away, an echo dissipating over the city. Jaime stood in the empty circle as in a forest clearing surrounded by unseen night creatures’ shining orbs, a thousand pairs of eyes trained on him. Cersei looked at him too, and Jaime saw it as plain as the sunlight on her face: she did not believe Jaime would harm her, even now, even after everything.

Jaime swung his left arm as far back as it would go in armor, took a moment to aim and adjust for wind and left-handed throwing, and flung the egg at his twin. 

It hit Cersei square in the middle of her forehead, and shattered on the rim of her helmet. Yellow and white dripped down her furious, outraged face and the shiny front of her armor. The High Sparrow raised his voice, an ululating cry of blasphemy, and was drowned out when the smallfolk howled with laughter, a sound like a starving wolves’ revel. 

A small object fell out of the broken egg, dropped to the cobblestones at Cersei’s feet, and glittered in the sun. It could have been a tiny sword, or a scepter for a young girl’s doll, or a needle made of gold. 

Cersei dropped her sword and lunged after the trinket, ungainly as a very small aurochs in her armor. Over her hunched form, Jaime saw his Cousin Lancel look straight at Jaime and smile a rueful little smile not at all like Lancel’s recent perennial expression of smug piety. Then Lancel dropped his hand from his sword hilt and took a single step to the side, allowing the mob to enter the space cleared for the trial by combat. 

Sparrows and smallfolk rushed in through the gap in the magic circle of Warrior’s Sons, their screams fit to make the blood curdle. Like participants in a filthy, unarmed, murderous melee, they surrounded Cersei, hiding her from Jaime’s view. He saw the glint of the gold trinket on the cobbles vanish under a Flea Bottom beggar’s bare foot, black with dirt, caught a brief glimpse of Cersei’s gilded armor flashing like a guttering beacon in the dun-colored press of bodies. Then she was gone, hidden from Jaime’s sight, drowned in unwashed flesh. 

He had thrown the egg, true, but a part of Jaime wanted to go to Cersei’s aid. Jaime’s feet started to move, heavy as stones, not quite rushing to help her, when a large, familiar hand fell on his shoulder and tugged him back and around. Face to face with Brienne, her bulk as solid as ever, buffeted yet unmoved by the ravenous, pungent humanity swirling around them, Jaime found that the choice was not easy but he made it anyway, made it in less time than it had taken him to breathe in, and take aim, and throw the egg. 

He lifted his empty hand, sticky with egg white, and removed Brienne’s hand from his shoulder. She stiffened, but Jaime clasped her big hand between his fingers and smiled up at her startled eyes, at the blush, soft as red velvet, which crept up her neck. He let the wench tug him along, tow him in her wake as she made of herself a battering ram which parted the crowd and cleared a path for them, the Great Sept at their back, the Winter sun beating down on their heads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternative chapter title: The Correct Way to Deal with Prophecies. One more chapter to go!


	6. Change

They left the city on foot while the mood of the crowd raging in front of the Great Sept spread like a forest fire down Visenya’s Hill, turning into a riot by the time it reached Flea Bottom. Wrapped in their cloaks and keeping to the narrowest, dankest alleys they could find, it still took Jaime and Brienne till well after nightfall to steal out through the Dragon Gate and reach the inn where Peck and the rest of Jaime’s small retinue awaited them, bags packed, horses saddled and ready. Jaime told himself to remember to praise Peck for his foresight, provided they all lived till the morning. 

The farther away from King’s Landing they traveled, the more Jaime searched his heart, yet felt no invisible thread binding him to his sister snap, no tug of destiny as he rode Honor and did not look back once. Brienne was astride Glory beside him, her bay mare lost in that savage crowd even before the smallfolk had started to riot. Jaime searched himself while they rode side by side in silence, and found some shame and a smidgen of guilt, but no sense of thwarted obligation, no feeling of failure or treachery. There should have been, but there were none, and he supposed that could count as a sort of courage, a kind of strength. 

The night had wheeled closer to morning, the white trail of stars a rutted cart track on the dark expanse above their heads, when they left the Kingsroad and sought shelter in a forest by a brook, to water the horses and rest for a bit before pressing on. While Peck conjured up a meal of cold meat and cheese and dry bread, and the men stretched and pissed and talked in hushed voices, their breaths smoking in the frigid night, Jaime caught Brienne’s eye, nodded curtly at the dense trees on the other side of the brook. She followed him into the deeper shadows of ancient trunks without a word. 

Jaime waited with his back turned until he heard her stop a few paces behind him. There was just enough starlight coming down between leafless branches for him to discern Brienne’s tall, hunched form, her eyes hidden as she gazed intently at her boots. Her hands hung empty, twitching as though wishing for a belt and sword hilt on which they could rest, useless as rotten planks without a sword on her hip.

“Where is my sword, wench?” 

He had never wanted the thrice-damned sword, calling it his had used to seem a deliberate insult. Yet facing Brienne now, Jaime felt a rare, righteous pleasure in reclaiming ownership of it. 

The wench winced as though he had actually drawn his sword, good steel but plain and nameless, lost in the wild melee in front of the Great Sept, and leveled its point at her throat. 

“Maggy has it,” Brienne muttered to her boots. 

“Explain.”

Brienne shuffled her feet. She looked around the tiny clearing where they stood. She wrung her hands. “It was her price. For helping me. For helping you.” 

“She used to favor a few drops of blood, if memory serves.”

Brienne squeezed her right forefinger in her left fist as though she would pull it out by the root. “She took some of that too, to tell me about the spell. She took the sword to help unravel the spell.” 

Jaime barked a laugh. It echoed between the tree trunks, bare branches enclosing them like the embrace of many dead men. “The sly old witch,” he chuckled. “What would she want with Oathkeeper? Well, wench?”

Brienne stared at her boots for so long Jaime thought he really would have to slap her to get her to speak. 

“My most precious possession.” 

The words were quiet and clear, and Brienne looked up at him at last from under a fall of pale hair, terrified yet calm, anchored and held fast in the certainty of her choice. 

Jaime returned her gaze. Some of the anger he had stored up for days the way a squirrel stores up nuts drained out of him precipitately, leaving him tired and light-headed. 

“Just as well I wasn’t with you, then,” he murmured. “If Maggy had asked me to name your most precious possession, I would have named your eyes or your sense of honor, and where would you be then?”

Brienne’s head snapped up, her cheeks and mouth twitching first with anger, then with pain flaring in her still-healing flesh. She straightened, her shoulders held so tightly they trembled like plucked strings. “Do not mock me, ser. Hate me if you must…”

“Hate you?” Jaime interrupted, laughing again, a trifle less harshly. “Is that what you think, wench? That I hate you for lying to me at Pennytree? I knew you were lying as soon as you opened your big mouth. It was my pride you injured, not my ability to see what is clear as dawn. I simply thought you incapable of lies, however poorly you delivered them.” 

Brienne gaped at him, open-mouthed. _Some things indeed never change_ , Jaime thought with wry amusement. Abruptly he changed course. 

“Do you realize you are a blasphemer now, like me? The Faith will finish Cersei off, if that mob didn’t eat her after they destroyed that gold trinket which was in the egg.” 

Brienne’s lack of reaction other than a warm blush told him he was right: the egg and whatever that shiny frippery had been were the key to the magic which had kept his sister proof against bodily harm, so she could play at being a knight for once in her life. 

“I hardly won the trial fairly and without assistance, and it should have been a duel to the death,” Jaime pursued, discovering an odd delight in his situation as he described it. “The High Sparrow will go hawking for me now, and you as well, wench. Did you think of that when you threw me the egg?”

“I only thought to help you defeat her without having you kill her,” Brienne blurted out. “Maggy said there was a prophecy that the queen’s younger brother would murder her, but I… I would not have stood by while you did it, ser. It would not have been right. To make you do it. I would have done it for you if I could have, but…” She stared at her feet again. 

“But your tender heart stopped your swordless hand, and you were clever enough to understand the easiest way to unravel a prophecy is to cut straight through it, and leave the outcome up to the mob.” 

He spoke kindly, yet Brienne half turned away from him, suspecting a jape, a veiled accusation.

“Brienne,” Jaime said. She glanced at him sideways, or maybe at the tree next to him, it was difficult to tell in the predawn darkness. “You know that Maggy could have taken your wits instead of your sword, don’t you, seeing as they’re somewhat sharper than anyone realized?” 

Brienne was frowning, he could see as much even in that tree-thick gloom. Jaime took two steps closer, still speaking, as though she were a horse which might bolt if he made a sudden move. 

“Did Maggy say my name?” Brienne shook her head, uncomprehending. “The prophecy. Did it mention my name? Or Tyrion’s?” Brienne shook her head again, this time in denial. “Of course it didn’t. Many people have younger brothers, and younger sisters too, and Cersei has managed to anger quite a few of them. If she lives still, it may well turn out that getting torn apart for bowls of brown would have been the best thing for her. A kindness.” Jaime grinned. “I have half a mind to go to Lannisport and teach Maggy a lesson in confusing innocent wenches with vaguely worded gibberish, and cheating them out of rare and precious swords.” 

Brienne was shaking her head again, looking bone-tired and unwilling to indulge in unraveling the subtleties of it with him. Two more steps brought Jaime close enough to rest his hand and stump on her shoulders, feel the warm breath whistling between her teeth on his face. 

“Brienne,” he said, startling himself and her with the fervor in his voice. “Brienne, don’t you see? You won out over Maggy, a prophecy, destiny, call it what you will. You defeated my sister and her sorcery, and protected me again. _You_ did that.” He stroked her cold cheek with his stiff fingers. “You fulfilled my quest, wench. You did.” 

Brienne’s voice was thick with unshed tears. “I am sorry, ser. The sword…”

“Bugger the sword. It’s only a piece of metal with a fanciful name, in the end. It never brought either of us any luck since my father had it forged from another man’s steel. Let Maggy keep it and choke on it.”

Brienne tried to shake her head again, but Jaime cupped her whole cheek with his good hand, calloused, aching finger pads sinking into her flesh, so all she could do was huff a little, swallowing tears. He twined his fingers in the hair on the back of her neck and shook her gently, just enough to make her whimper, and sniffle, and wrinkle her nose in a frown. And because it was more morning than night by then, and Jaime had spent days wrapped in a purposeless cold fury which had worn him out, had nearly been killed by his sister’s faith in prophecies, and sent the wench on a quest he had only half believed she would fulfill yet she had, it did not seem like such a terrible act to tug on Brienne’s hair, so she bowed her head a bit and Jaime could kiss her. 

He almost kissed her cheek, the corner of her broad mouth. Kissed her lips at the last moment, bold and foolhardy to the last. Nearly a child’s kiss, closed-mouthed yet free of dissembling. Brienne’s lips were chapped with the icy wind which had whipped her raw, but so were Jaime’s, and it felt better than any other kiss he cared to remember. It was not merciful, maybe, it was not just, but it was right. 

Brienne’s breath was a hot, dry Summer wind on Jaime’s cheek as she let him kiss her, and even moaned a little when he flicked her lips with the tip of his tongue. The kiss was a thank you and a greeting between equals. The setting down of one set of vows, and the donning of another. A knight’s salute to the maiming and loss Brienne had suffered while on the quest she had accepted and Jaime had encouraged. A recognition of the anger and pain which had stood between them like a mountain, and had now been scaled. Maybe, if the gods were good or at least looked away and busied themselves with other things, it was even a promise of more, a pledge they might both keep. Jaime had been expelled from the Kingsguard, and Brienne was promised to no man. Nothing much was made simpler thereby, but what vows they still had they held in common, another shining thread which bound them to each other. 

Jaime released her, rubbed their chilled noses together, and stepped back, laughing. He had almost forgotten how good laughter could feel. There was enough thin, grey predawn light in the clearing for Jaime to take in how Brienne’s eyes shone, how she blushed and bit her lip, but did not scowl to see him laugh. 

They were both fugitives from the laws of gods and men now, with nothing but bitter memories behind them, Cersei’s madness only the freshest one of many, nothing but Winter and the madness of Brienne’s quest to find the Stark girls before them. Yet the morning brightened around them as clear and unblemished as ever, and Jaime’s heart felt warm, burning. Kindled not by a fool’s notions of destiny or false promises which had always been there, revealed at last to be as hollow as gourds. Something not quite new, fragile as an egg, bright and true as finely honed steel. 

“My lady.”

Jaime offered his left arm to Brienne with a grave bow, and she blushed crimson as she threaded her right arm through it. They walked back to rejoin Peck and the others, hips and thighs brushing, feet careful and uncertain on the frozen forest floor. Stiff, cold hands holding each other like roots which grew entwined with time.


End file.
